


Something Worth Taking Away

by marainein, Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Difference, Erotica, Flashbacks, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Pining, Romance, Stanford Era, Time Travel, Vessel Consent Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 07:45:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16614803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marainein/pseuds/marainein, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: Michael travels back to the year 2001 to try to convince a more vulnerable Dean to be his vessel, choosing the fraught time after Sam left for Stanford. When Castiel goes back to stop him, he has solid plans to dispatch Michael and confidence in Dean’s resistance…. but is utterly unprepared for the phenomenon of 18-year-old Sam.He didn’t plan to fall in love… but maybe he was always in love, and always would be.





	Something Worth Taking Away

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t express strongly enough what a joy it was to work with the kind and incredibly talented illiminal, (marainein here on Ao3) for this year’s SPN reverse Bang. All art embedded here is her splendid work. Everything she did for this challenge took my breath away as much as Sam takes Cas’s. <3 Many, many thanks to her for this amazing collaboration.

Sam woke with a rattling gasp. He tried to fill his lungs past the blood that clogged his nose and throat, struggling to sit up. An arm pressed his back, supporting him.

“Dean… where… what happened?”

An unfamiliar voice answered, and Sam jerked violently away from it and the arm that held him up. He immediately regretted it as nausea overwhelmed him.

“Dean is gone. I was unable to stop it,” said the strangely flat, gravelly voice. “We must recover him.”

Sam scooted far enough to look into the man’s face, moving carefully. The first thing his unevenly-clearing vision showed him was a pair of unearthly blue eyes. His stomach dipped strangely.

He knew he had lost time. It wasn’t his first concussion, though he thought it might be his first broken nose. When he felt it carefully to check, the pain was incredible. He gasped and tried not to throw up as the man’s form—oddly dressed, he had time to note—swirled again. He knew he should be reaching for a weapon, but he also knew he was in no shape to fight. Vague memories were trying to crowd in around the pain in his head—an undefined emergency some days ago that made him decide to break months of silence between him and his family. Something made him leave college on his first-ever Thanksgiving break, made him drive halfway across the country, California to central Kansas—to where he was sure Dean needed him. He got flashes of some sort of fight, and he’d seen Dean, and…

“Who are you?” he said—or tried to. The words were an unintelligible croak.

The man peered at him. “Oh. My apologies, Sam. There wasn’t time—but of course. You don’t know.”

He reached for Sam’s face, and Sam said “Hey!” and tried to bat him away, but the man said, sternly, “Hold still,” and for some reason, he instantly obeyed. 

The man laid a cool hand on his forehead. It… hurt? But then it didn’t, and with a snapping sensation everything was suddenly, urgently sharper; Sam’s breath stormed through his lungs, his heart leaped—

And everything was normal. The pain in his head and face were gone. Not just _alleviated,_ and his nausea was not just improved, his vision not merely clearer—he had been badly hurt, and the man had _fixed_ him.

His memory snapped into place a half-second later; the past few days rushing behind his eyes, like watching a movie on fast-forward. He brought himself to his last memory, of the creature he’d driven across the country to help Dean fight—the one that had taken Dean’s own form—saying something about the cavalry arriving, then with a casual gesture flinging Sam a dozen yards across the Kansas cemetery, face first into a stone mausoleum.

Sam thought the cavalry was a reference to him; the creature hadn’t spotted him yet as it and Dean grappled with each other. Now he knew it wasn’t him, but—

“Who _are_ you?” he said again, perfectly clearly this time. 

“I am an angel of the lord,” the man said.

  


_Five days earlier_

The advance of autumn made Palo Alto… if not precisely cool, at least more tolerable. Though his time at Stanford was already longer than he’d usually spent in one place with his family, it was terribly empty and foreign. He missed the change of seasons, even if he only saw them from the back seat of the Impala. The perpetual sun and changeless, golden-hazy days felt oppressive, when he wasn’t in class or studying hard. Those classes, and the chance to seek all the knowledge he could want—about something besides what was trying to kill him or had killed part of his family—were amazing. Stanford was amazing. The loneliness, the cold, empty space that greeted him when he turned to say something to Dean, to _talk_ to someone—it was worth it, to be living his dream, and to have left the long nightmare of life in a hunting family behind.

 _Forever,_ he told himself, each time he doubted, each time he thought perhaps he had chosen wrong. Each time he worried about what Dean and, yes, even Dad might be doing, late at night when his largely absentee roommate, if he had bothered to come home that night, was snoring across the room. When memories of long, empty rural roads under moonlight seeped in, the fear of claws and teeth in the dark, he shoved them aside. _He chose it,_ Sam reminded himself. _And Dean made his choice to go along with it. I choose something else. I choose_ this. 

It had helped, at first. Less and less these days, as the occasional gray day reminded him that the year was growing old. A restlessness was growing in him, and it was less about memories of Boston Market in a chilly hotel room at midnight when Dad remembered it was Thanksgiving, and more what Dad had always called _the hunter’s itch._ He’d told Sam about it on a rare, quiet summer afternoon some weeks after Sam’s twelfth birthday, when Dad had no cases and no leads and they’d been in town long enough for Dean to find a girl to chase.

“We’re gonna have to leave this place soon,” Dad said, reaching from his camp chair to pull a beer from the green Coleman cooler between them.

Sam knew better than to ask why, or to beg to be allowed to stay. His constant wish to put down roots, to go to school long enough to get actual grades, to think about something but Dad’s relentless obsession for a few weeks at a time… it was just the backdrop of his life, bait he no longer rose to. When he was silent long enough that Dad knew no reply was coming, Dad looked over.

“I know you don’t want to,” he said. “Do you know, I don’t want to either? I like this place.”

It was a cabin on the edge of a small town in Idaho that belonged to one of Dad’s hunter contacts. The hunter rarely used it, and town was near enough for quick supply trips, but far enough that people hadn’t noticed them much. It was beautiful and peaceful. They could have stayed. 

“Every time I’ve ignored this feeling, Sam? Every time I gave in to the urge to rest a while, to stay a little longer, do you know what happens? Someone dies. I can feel it out there—the next monster. Soon I’ll get a call or read a newspaper story and I’ll know where I’m supposed to be.”

Sam had gotten out of his camp chair halfway through this speech and headed back into the cabin, shutting the door on the last of his father’s words. He hadn’t wanted to hear these speeches ever again. He was tired of hearing where his father was supposed to be that dragged his kids into danger and away from anything there was for a normal kid to want—even to need. 

Sam had started thinking then of where _he_ had to go. He had his own itch—the desire for roots, friendships, learning, and safety. Six years ago those seeds were already sown, and now, at Stanford, Sam had a chance to see something grow from them.

But as he remembered the conversation he’d closed the cabin’s door on, much as he didn’t want to, he realized he knew now what his dad meant. The feeling was invading his quiet days, his hours of learning that had started to make the nightmare of his old life fade. He’d tried to pretend, among all these people who had no cause to believe in them, that monsters were no longer real. They were not, and would not be, part of _his_ reality. 

Such thoughts and hopes were in vain. Monsters had invaded his sleep. He could feel them out there, stalking and killing as they always had, and he could not shake the feeling that they were _coming._

Not for him. Not to sunny Stanford, and perhaps not even for his father. Sam would let them come, if it were for Dad, because Dad had made his choice, and the monsters were probably no match for him anyway. But the dreams, vivid as reality and filled with shadows even the California sun could not dispel, showed Dean as the monster’s prey. 

Thus Sam understood the hunter’s itch, because that was not all right with him. Not at all.

* * *

“My name is Castiel,” the man added, as if the name part were a mere afterthought.

Sam eyed him and considered his ridiculous declaration. Angel, huh. He’d not heard that exact delusion before, though the hunting community boasted a variety of… _interesting_ personalities. There were plenty of religious types, of course, who considered themselves on a mission from God. Sam supposed this was just another manifestation of that obsession.

He thought over the last five days, recalling the intense feeling, the dreams as vivid as life, that had spelled out his certainty that Dean _needed_ him. He’d casually texted his brother to try to learn where he was. There had been mostly radio silence between them since Sam had left in August, but he’d heard from Dean once or twice, and hoped Dean would not hold a grudge that Sam had not responded. He’d wanted to—he’d stared at each text for minutes and even hours before telling himself a clean break would be less painful.

He waited an agonizing 18 hours for Dean’s reply, which came while Sam was in Economics class on the last day before Thanksgiving break. The class was thinly attended, so when his phone buzzed, he checked to make sure the professor’s attention didn’t wander too close to him, flipped it open, and read,

 _the College primmadonna rembers he has a family huh?_

A moment later his phone vibrated again.

_you good??_

Sam smiled. _I’m good. You good?_ he thumbed back.

If he pushed too hard for details of where Dean was and what he was doing, Dean would get suspicious. He forced himself to be casual, to delay his replies a little and keep them incurious as details came forth slowly, Dean’s intermittent texts coded to tell what would be an innocent tale to unwanted eyes, but which told Sam everything he needed to know.

Dean was fine, or thought he was fine. He and Dad had split up—apparently there was some big, dangerous lead Dad wanted to follow in upstate New York, so when what looked like a simple salt-and-burn came up in the Kansas City area, he’d sent Dean to take care of it by himself—Dean’s first case alone, at least that Dad knew about. Sam could read Dean’s pride between the coded lines of text. That case had been open and shut, Dean said, and he was headed a little further west to follow a lead of his own.

Then the texts stopped. Sam tried to be patient, but when he finally gave in and called, and got a “user out of area” message, the “itch” became unbearable, and he’d thrown a change of clothes in a bag, hotwired a car with barely a flicker of conscience, and headed east as fast as the anonymous little blue Honda Civic could carry him.

Sam peered at “Castiel”, recalling what he’d driven into. “You… weren’t there, were you?” he asked.

“At the fight in the cemetery? No. I arrived too late to stop Michael. He has Dean, and as I mentioned, we must recover him.”

“Are you a hunter?” Sam asked.

The man stared at him. He had an oddly flat, level gaze, similar to his voice. Sam hoped he wasn’t a sociopath. He noticed that his eyes were intensely blue. 

The man shook his head. “A soldier,” he answered.

Sam gave a small smile. “Of God, right?” He looked around himself. They appeared to be in an abandoned house—the room had missing floorboards and holes in the drywall. There was graffiti on the walls and other signs squatters had been here, including the old, musty-smelling bedroll Sam found himself sitting on.

“Yes,” said the man shortly—not as if he expected mockery or doubt, which was strange. “Sam, if you are healed now, we should be on our way. There is a great deal of blood on your clothes. I understand this is uncomfortable, so you may wish to wash or change clothes.”

Sam stared. He stood and looked down at himself, and gasped—his gray button-down shirt and the T-shirt beneath it were nearly black with blood. He felt at his face. No pain, but his fingers came away sticky-red, and reality punched through his denial suddenly. No. It was impossible. He’d been… _seriously_ injured. He hadn’t been exaggerating it—Winchesters didn’t do that. They shook it off and stitched each other up and they didn’t need the hospital. But this man hadn’t stitched him, or given him painkillers, or done anything at all but touch him lightly.

He groped in his blood-stiff jeans for his gun, but when his fingers touched it, he felt a strange flood of guilt. He plucked his hands from his pockets and then did not know what to do with them. A strange feeling crept over him—fear, he thought, but of a kind foreign to him, and unbidden the words _be not afraid_ came into his head.

“You’re not… human,” he said finally. “How—”

“Sam, we do not have time for this. My powers are at an ebb at this end of—” He did not finish, and frowned, as if at himself for what he had been about to say. “I cannot transport you except in emergencies. We should return to your car so you can change.”

A little dazed, Sam got to his feet and followed Castiel out of the house, vaguely wondering, among other things, how Castiel had “transported” him here in the first place. A memory flashed behind his eyes of Castiel kneeling beside him where he lay in a broken heap next to the mausoleum. He felt that he was watching from outside his body as Castiel scooped him up, more like Sam might pick up his notebook to head for class than as if he were dead-lifting a 180-pound man taller than himself…

And Castiel’s eyes… _glowed._ Sam thought them unearthly blue, but in this memory, “unearthly” was quite literal… and as Sam reflected on the image of himself, draped in Castiel’s arms like a swooning damsel, over Castiel’s shoulder—he was certain now—he had glimpsed wings.

He said nothing, following Castiel down the neglected street. Half the houses seemed empty if not actually abandoned. He recalled where they were—where he’d driven to in his frantic search for Dean, anyway—and felt an odd, anxious thrill when he realized he was walking the streets of the town where he’d been born.

Anxious thrills seemed to be the feeling of the moment. He watched Castiel striding ahead of him, and as was Sam’s way, while his emotions were still sorting themselves out, his quick, logical mind had pieced together the puzzle.

Castiel was, in fact, an angel.

Sam had so many questions his tongue could not find a single one. His faith, the beliefs he’d stoked to embers and kept hidden in the forge of his heart through all the years of his father’s cynicism, flared with tremulous, painful hope. None of his experience of things dark and unnatural and unholy had quite succeeded in vanquishing his hope for the opposite—his longing for the holy and the divine, and now it strode ahead of him through a cracked and lonely Midwestern town, wearing a slightly dirty trench coat.

Perhaps that was why, when Castiel touched him, when Sam looked into those celestial blue eyes, and now when he watched the angel move, watched fingers of chill late-autumn wind play with his dark tousled hair, he felt what could only be called desire.

As he identified the feeling, Castiel suddenly halted his stride and looked back. Sam stumbled when Castiel’s eyes caught him like a trap snapping shut on him. How could he have believed those eyes to be human? They went into him, _dissected_ him, knew all of him in a moment, Sam was sure. Those eyes saw every mistake and weakness in Sam—every sin, including, Sam feared, the one he had just realized he wanted to commit. He flushed and stopped dead on the sidewalk, looking mutely into the heavens reflected in Castiel’s gaze.

The angel gestured at him, and Sam flinched—was Castiel about to burn him to ash for the sin he saw in him? But Castiel just frowned. “Your stride is slow and you are limping,” he said. “Did I fail to heal an injury to your leg?”

A Lawrence resident chose that moment to bang open the bent, rusty screen door of his house and come striding out. He scowled at Cas as Sam froze defensively, then made a scoffing sound that dismissed them both when his eyes caught Sam in his bloodstained clothes. 

“Halloween’s over, buddy,” he quipped as he reached the end of his front sidewalk. He picked up the newspaper that lay there, shook his head at them and went back into his house.

Castiel did not acknowledge the man; his eyes barely flicked away from Sam for a moment. Sam realized he was waiting for an answer. 

“Uh, my leg is fine,” Sam managed, looking down at his feet. “It’s just my shoe.” The sole of one of the ancient pair of Converse sneakers was separating from the upper, and if Sam walked too fast, it caught on things and he tripped. Bought two sizes too big three years ago at a church rummage sale, they were laced open as wide as possible and could barely contain his feet now, but they were the only shoes Sam owned at the moment.

Castiel was looking at him, his gaze inscrutable as usual, but it softened. An odd light came into his eyes. 

“I had forgotten this,” he said, stepping closer to Sam. Sam tried not to flinch back, and also tried not to surge forward, fighting a desire to get uncomfortably close.

But Castiel got too close, and Sam’s breath caught as the angel clasped his shoulder. “There is nothing to fear, Sam,” he said. “I cannot explain fully, but I am here to help you and Dean.”

“With what?” Sam managed, when Castiel turned to keep walking and he could breathe again. “What was that thing in the cemetery? It… it looked like Dean. Was it a shifter?”

Castiel was silent a long moment. “I am unsure of what to tell you, Sam. I must ask you a question instead. Do I seem familiar to you? Did the… creature who took Dean?”

It was Sam’s turn not to answer at first. “Yes,” he said finally. He was still disturbed by that, and by the vividness of the dreams that had told him where to go to find Dean, and even of the familiarity of this town he hadn’t visited since he was a toddler. But the strangeness of that paled in comparison with meeting an _angel,_ and there was no point in lying about it. “You do seem familiar, and so did the thing Dean was fighting. It looked like him—exactly like him—but I could tell the difference. That’s why I thought shifter, but… I knew that wasn’t it.” 

He did not know how to explain that the _feel_ of Not-Dean had been what he recognized, with a deep, intrinsic terror a shifter would not create in him, and conversely, the relief he’d felt when he saw Cas. Now… where had that nickname come from? “Cas,” he said, and Castiel had no reaction. “Is that what I usually call you?”

Cas stiffened, keeping his face carefully neutral. He turned and kept walking, slowing his stride with a glance at Sam’s feet. “Do we have a usually?”

“Do we?” asked Sam. He watched the angel carefully, instinctively analyzing body language and other cues that told him the angel was hiding a serious secret.

After a long silence, he said. “Call me Cas.”

~ * * * ~ 

Cas thought that Sam’s visions might make an early appearance due to the presence of angels, or because of the threat to his brother. In fact, he had often wondered if they had shown themselves long before the Winchesters knew anything about angels or demons or their role in any apocalypse. Sam was an exceptionally intuitive man in all the times Cas knew him. Cas’s task in this timeline might be harder than he’d expected.

He hoped to create as few memories as possible in Sam that he would have to remove later. If the whole thing could be accomplished without revealing that he was from the future, that would be ideal, but he hadn’t counted on an 18-year-old Sam being nearly as sharply clever and curious as the older one.

There was more he had not counted on, besides. More in his own heart, long-buried embers stirring to fire when he looked at the beautiful, broken, painfully earnest young Winchester.

Broken. But not as broken as he would become. Not only did Cas have to let it happen, he had to do everything in his power to ensure that it did, despite Michael’s interference.

The Dean that Michael met, the determined young man who lost his father and mother and childhood to divine and profane plans for an apocalypse, the hardened hunter who would protect his brother at any cost and had gone to hell to prove it, would never say yes to being his vessel. 

But a younger, more vulnerable Dean—one who had no plan or purpose yet, lonely since his brother left and suffering from the remoteness of a father who was slipping further and further into obsession… that Dean had much less to lose. If he could be made to believe his father couldn’t be saved, his mother couldn’t be avenged, and his brother was lost to him forever…

Cas couldn’t find it in his heart to worry much that Michael would succeed. Even an archangel couldn’t move through time at will without a cost, so he didn’t have much time to make his case. Cas was juiced up from borrowed grace and had angel cuffs, holy oil, and a spell combination that would drain Michael of enough grace to permanently banish him from this time—as soon as he caught up with him.

For that, he needed Sam, and Sam’s dreams. Michael was cloaking his presence in this timeline somehow. Cas couldn’t find him by himself. The convergence of energy at Stull Cemetery had resonated into the past, making it a logical point of entry for Michael, and a place to lure Dean that worked faster than Cas had anticipated. He had arrived too late to stop Michael, who had appeared before Dean wearing Dean’s own appearance, from kidnapping Dean.

And now, here Cas was… with Sam.

When he met Sam, it was as a game piece and potential enemy in the battle the warriors of heaven were waging. He had felt Sam’s attraction to him, and brushed it off as merely a misguided belief that he could answer Sam’s prayers—offer him a connection to the holy that he so desperately wished for—and had not thought, ever, that he could act on any return feeling.

In all the betrayals since, in himself, the feeling had only grown. But he could not imagine that it had not died an ugly death in Sam. Sometimes he wondered how the younger Winchester could even look at him, let alone forgive him.

Let alone something more.

~ * * * ~ 

Through the daze of returning memories and his overwhelmed state, Sam began to recognize the area where he’d left his car.

“Perhaps, before we continue our search, we should both acquire new clothes so that we ‘blend’ better,” said Cas. He matched Sam’s stride as Sam spotted the Honda Civic and sped up. “I presume you have clothes to change into so you will no longer look like a Halloween costume, but mine are also attracting attention. If I look like another college student on break, we will look like we make sense together.”

Sam grinned as he unlocked the trunk of the stolen car. He felt an intense flare of attraction again. It was more than just the appeal of holiness, Sam was sure. Cas was also just a really fine-looking man, and Sam was not immune. Not at all. So though he knew he should be asking questions about Cas’s plans and intentions, what came out instead was flirting.

“We could make sense together,” he said, looking Cas up and down. He smiled and lowered his eyes suggestively. Was it his imagination, or did a flicker of pleased surprise pass over that unreadable face? 

“I really need a shower, but a bottle of water and a change of clothes in the bushes should do the trick until we can get a motel room for the night,” he continued. He grabbed his water bottle and duffel. He smiled at Cas again, and he could swear the angel felt it! “Will you… stand guard?” he asked, nodding toward the bushes at the roadside.

“Of course,” Cas said, and followed him to the bushes. Sam peeled off his shirt quickly, hoping Cas would get a glimpse before he turned his back. He wasn’t sure if he had. He draped the bloody clothes over a bush and poured water over himself, gasping at the cold. As he’d hoped, Cas glanced at him when he gasped, and to keep his gaze, Sam started talking. 

It worked. Cas’s eyes took in Sam’s naked form as he chattered, shivering. “This will do until I get a hot shower. I don’t want to get blood all over the car, or my clean clothes. Maybe you could explain more of why you’re here, and why you and whatever’s after Dean seem familiar. You’re an angel, so it’s hard not to trust you, but I should get back to school, you know. Man, that’s cold! Any idea where we’re going next?”

OK, Cas was definitely interested. His eyes lingered on Sam as Sam scrubbed at the blood that had soaked through to his skin with the cleaner side of his discarded shirt. When he was as clean as he could get, he got dressed, watching Cas’s eyes linger on his hands as he drew on his jeans.

Cas didn’t speak, and Sam found his inscrutable silence unbearably sexy. What _was_ this? He never had the confidence to flirt like this, and there were other things he should really be thinking about, but his desire and interest felt _urgent,_ like the time to act on them was now and there was none to waste. 

“Well?” he said as he finished dressing. He stepped right up to Cas and gave his best seductive look, right into the eyes slightly below his. 

Cas cleared his throat. “I… we should go, Sam. I will answer what questions I can, but…”

“I have one more,” said Sam, catching the sleeve of Cas’s coat to keep him from turning away. “Did you like what you saw?”

There it was—Cas’s eyes widened and he took in a breath; Sam was _sure_ he felt it. But he pulled his sleeve free and turned back to the car.

“I did not mean to invade your privacy,” he said gruffly.

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Sam finished burying his bloody clothes, which were torn as well and beyond saving, in a drift of leaves under the bushes. Cas got into the passenger seat of the car, so he got in the driver’s seat. 

He let the silence stretch for a minute as he hotwired the car to start. Cas’s eyes followed the motion of Sam’s hands as he sparked the engine to life, but he still did not speak. Finally Sam said, “You suck at answering questions.”

He looked over at Cas. When he caught his eye in the rearview mirror, he smiled, trying to share the joke. To his dismay, as Cas looked away, his face betrayed the first real emotion Sam had seen there, and it was unfathomable sadness. 

“Hey,” Sam said, and with a thrill of fear at daring to touch a divine being, he reached for Cas’s hand. Cas allowed the touch, his hand warm and dry against Sam’s frigid fingers. “Hey,” he said again softly, folding Cas’s hand between both of his own, “what’s wrong? I didn’t mean anything…” 

He stopped, his breath catching when Cas squeezed his hand, placing his other hand over both of Sam’s. “It’s all right, Sam. I do suck at answering your questions. There is so little I can say. I cannot explain, Sam, but… you must do as you were going to do. I cannot interfere.”

“Well, what I was going to do is try to get you to kiss me,” Sam said, holding tight to Cas’s hand and leaning closer. “Do you want to interfere with that?”

To Sam’s intense pleasure, Cas leaned into him, his eyes half-closing. “I… I should. But no. I do not wish to.” 

So Sam let go of Cas’s hands to cup his face, and Cas’s arms came around him, and he kissed him. It was sweet, and a little awkward, and it filled Sam with a blazing desire, but as he wormed his way over the gear shift between them to kiss Cas more deeply, Cas stopped him.

“Sam, we mustn’t—”

“Are we lovers in the future?” Sam blurted suddenly. Cas’s eyes widened with a startled blink, and Sam knew he had hit on it. “That’s why I know you, right? You’re from my future. I didn’t think time travel was possible, but you’re an angel, so… and the dreams. The dream showed me where to find Dean, and you were in it, and things I’ve dreamed have come true before. So you knew I would like you. Are we together?”

Cas gently pushed Sam away and sat upright. “No,” he said. “We never became… become lovers.”

Sam let him go and faced forward. The car had warmed up, so he turned on the heat. He had no idea where they should go, but he pulled onto the road anyway. He had to get gas if he was going to keep driving this car. 

“Why not?” he asked. “I’m sure future-me wants you. It didn’t surprise you, and you said… you said you’d forgotten about this. Was that what you meant? That I’m…. attracted to you?”

“Sam, it is better if we don’t speak of these things. The less you know the better. There will be… others whom you love.”

“Is that why, then? I’m with someone else?” Sam felt both strangely excited by the idea and saddened. He had never been as smitten by anyone as he was by Cas.

Cas did not answer. Instead, he picked up a road atlas the previous owner had left on the floor of the car. “I cannot pinpoint it exactly—it is partially cloaked from me—but there is an angelic presence to the north, some hours at speed, I believe. That is the direction we’ll head. You will require rest and food before we—”

“That’s what has Dean—another angel?”

Cas winced, and sighed. “I also ‘suck’ at subterfuge, I suppose,” he said, using air quotes. “You are far too clever for this task, Sam. Yes, it is an angel. Please… don’t ask me more.”

Sam was silent for a moment. “I won’t,” he said finally, and was rewarded by Cas’s small, sad smile.

~ * * * ~ 

They stopped for gas at the edge of town. To Sam’s relief, when he saw Sam worriedly counting out dollar bills to see how much gas he could afford, Cas took out a wad of cash and paid to fill up. They drove through Kansas City and about an hour north on I-29 before Sam’s sleepless night, driving straight through from California to Kansas, began to catch up with him. Seeing him shake his head to keep awake, Cas said, “You must have rest. Stop at the next motel.”

“You could drive awhile while I sleep. I mean—you can drive, right?”

Cas seemed startled. “Yes… my apologies, I… usually don’t get to.” 

Sam grinned. “Because of Dean, I bet. You know him in the future, too. He won’t let anyone else drive unless it’s Dad, or his arm is broken.” 

“Often not even then,” agreed Cas. “But we should stop. The town ahead should have something acceptable. In addition to you needing a shower and rest, we may learn something from your dreams.”

“So… that’s real. That I dream about the future?”

“It is real. I think it will stop—for a while—after your future is no longer… in your present.”

“You mean… you.” Sam deflated. Despite the anxious itch of all the unanswered questions, his worry for Dean, and the pull to return to his chosen life at Stanford, he found that being around Cas was making him… happy. “You can’t stay.”

“No. Only long enough to resolve my business here, and I must not impact your life too much.”

“Is that why you won’t kiss me?”

“I did kiss you.” Sam could feel him biting back the words _though I shouldn’t have._ It both saddened and thrilled him.

“Then is that why you won’t sleep with me?”

He felt the angel stiffen, startled and perhaps something else. He was silent a second too long before answering, “Angels do not sleep.”

“You know what I mean.” 

“Yes,” Cas answered shortly.

The highway night was deep between towns, and Sam’s glance at the passenger seat told him nothing of Cas’s expression, but he felt the tension in his body, and he wanted to touch him so badly it was unbearable. Knowing he had so little time only ramped up the urgency. 

Soon enough they reached the outskirts of a town that boasted some motels seedy enough to be cheap. Sam picked one and pulled in. 

At least now he knew he only had to pay for one bed.

 

Sam was so exhausted that he almost fell asleep in the shower after they checked in. Washing flakes of dried blood out of his hair, he wondered if he would be dead now, if not for Cas.

When he came out, he blinked in surprise. He heard Cas thank someone as he closed the door to their room. He turned to Sam with a pizza box in hand.

Sam’s stomach immediately growled so loudly he knew Cas must hear it. For the past year or more, Sam had found he was ravenous all the time. He remembered a few years before, when Dean had been the same way, and Dad had compared teenage boys to a plague of locusts. He felt an unexpected pang of homesickness, perhaps because this motel room was typical of his “homes” back then.

The angel glanced at him as he set down the box and took a Styrofoam container out of a bag. “You should eat. I understand growing boys need their nourishment.”

Sam bristled a bit at “boy,” not wishing to hear that from someone he wanted to sleep with. He sat down to the little Formica table. “Think I’m past that, but grown men need nourishment, too,” he said. “Thanks.”

Cas was looking at him speculatively. “You are not past that. You will grow at least two more inches.”

“What? No way!” Sam had opened the container to find a surprisingly good salad there, with everything he liked on it. A sniff told him it was even his favorite dressing. “At seventeen I was already taller than Dean or Dad!”

“Well, at thirty you’re a Sasquatch, or so Dean likes to call you.”

Sam started bolting down pizza and salad, a sense of security and relief washing over him both at the food and at Cas’s sudden forthcomingness. “You know me when I’m _thirty?_ What am I like?”

Cas gave a little smile, but he looked sad. “It’s not that far away, Sam. You are much as you are now.”

“But taller.” Sam gave Cas a flirtatious grin, trying to keep the mood light and Cas talking, but Cas already looked troubled. “Look,” Sam said, “it can’t hurt to tell me a couple of little things like that. I’m not going to make different decisions because I’m 6’4 instead of 6’2.”

“Perhaps not,” Cas said, but he did not offer further conversation, instead looking at a road atlas while Sam ate. Sam soon found himself nodding over the last slice of pizza. Things were starting to look too bright around the edges, so he wiped his face with a napkin, stripped to his underwear, and crawled into bed.

He dropped off immediately, but woke not long later. He looked around. The light was on, and Cas still stood by the window, but he had put the atlas away and was now gazing at Sam. 

Sam felt a wave of longing so intense he had no name for it. It was more than desire, more than the craving for affection and touch he had felt even before he met Cas, and with a sharp urgency since then. He needed so much. He needed to know there was good in this world, and that he could create a life deserving of that goodness. He needed to know there was divinity to balance the profane he’d always known—meeting Cas had made him believe it, but he was desperate to _feel_ it.

He cleared his throat. “Cas,” he said. “You really don’t even… need to rest a little? I know you don’t sleep, but you could get more comfortable.”

“I do not experience comfort or discomfort,” Cas answered. “But I am sorry if I disturbed you. I forgot about the light.” 

He turned out the lamp on the table and turned slightly away from Sam, looking out between the curtains.

“Cas,” Sam whispered. He felt he was confessing to the dark, to Cas’s still silence. “I’m really… really lonely. At Stanford, and now. I thought it would be different, but the world… just feels so empty. I miss Dean and even Dad sometimes, and I can’t connect with anyone, and… I don’t want to sleep here by myself, and it’s weird to have you standing there. I promise I won’t, you know, molest you. Would you just lie next to me?”

Cas turned toward him. Light from the streetlights outside played across his face; Sam thought he caught a tender expression there as Cas took off his trench coat and the suit jacket underneath and laid them over the chair. 

“You seek divine comfort,” he said, as he stretched out stiffly on the bed. “Sam, I… am perhaps not all that you think I am—what you think angels should be. But I will offer what I can.”

“You’re more than enough,” Sam said, opening the covers to welcome Cas in. He drew Cas close, and Cas did not resist as he spooned him, sighing with relief at the warmth and closeness. “This is all I need.”

Nestled against Cas, with a faint scent like desert sage filling his nose, he fell instantly, deeply asleep.

~ * * * ~ 

In the morning, Sam woke to find Cas’s face inches away. He had turned in his sleep so they were facing each other, and Cas’s arm was draped over him. Seeing Sam open his eyes, Cas lightly stroked a lock of hair out of his face. So close, the blue of his eyes pierced through Sam like a blade, cutting clean into his heart.

As naturally as breathing, Sam uncurled against him, drew him closer, and then they were kissing. Sam stroked Cas’s sides and back tentatively, touched his face in wonder, softly kissed his neck as Cas paused to give him breath. He thought he felt Cas tremble as he took his face in his hands and kissed him more deeply. He rolled Cas over and reached for the top button of the dress shirt he still wore, but Cas’s hands stopped his. “We… we must…” Cas tried to speak but Sam stopped his mouth with his, the kiss growing urgent. Abruptly Cas rolled him over, hard, and Sam gasped and arched up, but instead of kissing him again, Cas was off him and on his feet.

“We must… head north,” he said, his voice strangled. He had turned his back. “Your dreams told me where Dean is now.”

Sam did not answer. He wanted Cas back in bed with him more than he could express, but he also remembered the dream. Dean, in the junkyard of Singer Salvage, sitting on the hood of an old Mustang he and Bobby had started to restore together, before Dean decided it was too pussy compared to the Impala. Leaning against an old engine block, talking to him, was… also Dean, but not. Though he spoke calmly and showed no signs of having a weapon to hand, the look in his eyes—not-Dean eyes in Dean’s face—filled Sam with a hot, impermeable terror and loathing, fear like none he’d ever known, and he knew it was borrowed from a future he never wanted to reach.

He pushed the dream aside, still feeling a pang at Cas’s rejection, though he knew it wasn’t total. He knew there was hope. He got up, and as Cas turned his back to let him dress, he said, “Bobby’s place. In Sioux Falls. It shouldn’t take us long to get there.”

“We must stop for clothes first. It is important that I do not make much impression on Bobby, should we meet him. If you can pass me off as your friend from school—”

“Boyfriend. I’ll pass you off as my boyfriend,” Sam said firmly.

Cas turned to him. There was anguish in his eyes, though Sam saw him try to cloak it. “Sam, I don’t think—”

“Bobby won’t be shocked—he knows I like guys sometimes, though Dad doesn’t. He’ll be a little embarrassed though, so if I introduce you that way, he won’t look at you twice. It’s the best way to help you blend. It’ll probably work really well on everyone else, too.”

Cas was looking at him, and when Sam caught his eye, the raw longing on Cas’s face took his breath away. Sam came to him tentatively, and when Cas did not pull away, he embraced him. “It’s OK,” he said, and kissed him, lightly and briefly. “Thanks for the comfort last night. We don’t have to do more than that. If we hold hands in public, you’ll see how quickly everyone looks away. It’ll make us invisible.” 

“Unless it makes us targets.”

“You saying you can’t handle a couple of homophobic rednecks? Well, I can, if I have to, but you just watch. It’ll work like a charm.”

Sam was right. When they got out of the car at the thrift store in town, Sam caught Cas’s hand and walked into the store holding it. A middle-aged woman getting into her car immediately averted her eyes. No one did more than glance at them as they shopped.

“You must get new shoes,” Cas said, nodding toward a rack. “I think jeans and a T-shirt would be appropriate for me.”

They parted to hunt for what they needed. There were almost no shoes big enough for Sam, but out of desperation he tried on a pair of hiking books that looked enormous—and found they were only about a size too big. If he was still growing, that was perfect.

He could use another hoodie while he was here in the chilly Midwest, and maybe a new flannel shirt. He might have to hustle some pool to get gas money enough to get back to Stanford if he bought that much, but he needed some things anyway, and a thrift store in Missouri was probably cheaper than one in Palo Alto. While he was looking for the practical items, he turned up a purple shirt with a picture of a greyhound on it. It made him smile somehow, so he took it in the dressing room with him. Cas was in the stall next door.

“Come out and show me what you’ve got,” he called when he was dressed.

Cas obeyed, and Sam choked on a laugh when he saw him. His amusement turned to intense interest as he looked Cas over, thoroughly now while he had an excuse to do so.

“You look… _great,”_ he said.

It was true. In the close-fitting jeans and T-shirt, Sam could really see Cas’s body for the first time, and it was well worth looking at. But beyond that there was the shirt itself, and Sam felt first embarrassment, then amusement, then pure joy at the sight of Cas in it.

Vince Vincente stood on Cas’s chest in possibly the most flamboyant outfit of the pinnacle of the hair-metal era. Sam didn’t know what to call the suspenders-and-leather-Speedo onesie thing, but picturing Dean’s response to Ladyheart generally and Vince in that outfit specifically, he suddenly knew passing Cas off as a gay, ironically hipster college student would be the easiest thing in the world. Combined with the way the shirt clung to Cas’s lean, lightly-muscled body, and how Sam couldn’t take his eyes off him, he was also sure acting the part of his smitten lover would be no act at all.

“It’s _perfect,”_ Sam said.

“Are you sure? You laughed when you first saw it. Is it… not cool?”

“It’s so much better than cool,” Sam answered. Slinging his arm around Cas, he held up the sleeve of the plaid shirt he’d found. “You might want to wear this over it—I know you won’t feel cold, but short sleeves might draw attention in this weather. Though it’s a shame to cover this up.” He stroked Cas’s upper arm suggestively, half expecting Cas to pull away.

Cas did not. In fact, he stood still as if to preserve every moment of Sam’s touch, eyes half-closing helplessly.

Glancing around to see if anyone was looking, Sam couldn’t resist a brief kiss. “C’mon, rock god,” he said, holding Cas out by the shoulders and giving him another long, appreciative look. “I found some stuff, too. Let’s get on the road.”

Getting, or rather staying, on the road proved to be more of a challenge than Sam had hoped, though. A snowstorm rolled in as they left the little town north of Lawrence, turning the roads to treacherous ice.

The Civic’s half-bald tires might be fine for California, but were not up to an icy Midwest highway. After almost sliding off the road twice, Sam was relieved to find a town large enough to have an auto parts store, where they stopped to buy an ice scraper and tire chains. Side-eyeing the two of them, the gruff mechanic manning the register, when he could not convince them to find a room in town to wait out the storm, insisted on installing the chains himself, to Sam’s relief. Dean was the car guy, not him.

They crawled north, never going more than thirty miles an hour, for an exhausting few hours as the storm grew worse. They stopped four times to scrape ice off the wiper blades, which had more or less given up early on. What should have been a four-hour drive had turned to seven hours, then nine, and they had not even reached Sioux City yet. 

Sam glanced anxiously over at Cas in the passenger seat. The angel sat rigid, glaring out at the weather. When he saw Sam looking at him, he sighed. “Sam, I fear this is growing dangerous for you. We may not be able to reach Dean today. We should find a motel and stop for the night. Mi—our enemy may be smart enough to worsen the storm between us and him.”

“He can do that? Does that mean you could change the weather, too?”

Cas did not answer for a moment. “He is more powerful than I,” he finally admitted. “And if I use up my power trying to reach him, I may not be able to stop him when I find him. Which he no doubt knows as well.”

Sam nodded, peering forward into the swirling whiteness. “I don’t know if we can get much further, anyway,” he said. “I’ll stop at the next place I see.”

The next place proved to be a truck stop so seedy even John Winchester might’ve driven 20 miles further to find something better, but Sam pulled into it wondering if the little Civic could have gone even one mile further. The gap-toothed, twitchy leer of the desk clerk did nothing to improve his feelings toward the place. When they reached the room, the furniture looked not to have been replaced since the early sixties, which was also probably the last time it had been given a thorough cleaning. 

But the ancient radiator made the room toasty in no time, and Sam gratefully stripped off his wet hoodie and sat on the bed, a rusty-springed antique that was one step up from a cot, and which creaked dangerously under his weight.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get there today,” he said, breaking a long silence. “I’m worried about Dean, but… he seemed OK, in my dream. Like he was holding his own.”

“I am confident that he can do so, long enough for me to do what is needed,” Cas answered. He was standing as far away as the little room allowed, with his back to Sam, in that ridiculously alluring shirt.

Sam sighed, noting that Cas was sucking less at subterfuge, now. “So… this other angel is our enemy, but he doesn’t want to kill Dean? What does he want? How will you keep him from getting it?”

Cas did not answer immediately, and Sam could tell he was deciding how much to reveal. But he also felt a fog of heavy sadness settling over the angel, and it seeped into him, too, as he realized he feared Cas’s answer.

“I will banish him from this time,” Cas said finally, “and erase Dean’s memories of him.”

A dread icier than the storm outside washed over Sam, a violent ache invading his chest. “You’ll erase my memories, too,” he whispered, struggling to speak around the pain. “That’s why… that’s why you won’t…”

Sam didn’t know why it hurt so much. He’d known, really. Cas kept saying he could not impact the future by being with Sam now. He’d known he was going to leave. But to not even _remember…_ the feeling of desperate love, of faith confirmed and beauty revealed beneath what he had come to see as the deep ugliness of the world—to have to go back to that cold, empty life without even knowing there was something else…

Cas was beside him suddenly. “Sam,” he murmured, putting his arm around him. “Sam, I am sorry. I did not mean… I never guessed you would feel this way. I promise… it will not trouble you. When I’m gone, your life will be as it was.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Sam answered, turning into Cas’s embrace. He clung hard to him and the angel embraced him back. “I… it feels so empty and wrong, Cas, and with you it feels right. I don’t want to go back. I know I have to, but—”

“You will want to, Sam. I promise. I have muddied the waters for you. They will become clear again when I am gone.”

“What will become clear?” Sam struggled against both tears and desire. Cas was so close, and Sam could feel the reciprocation of his own desperate need. “What do I have to know? If you just tell me, I’ll do it, I promise. You don’t have to make me forget.”

“Sam…” Cas was agonized. “I’m sorry. I must. I am sure you understand; you have heard of the butterfly effect. You must make the choices—live the life that lies ahead for you, without interference from me.”

“You mean… getting my degree at Stanford and becoming a lawyer?” Maybe he would fight for important justices as a lawyer, like he’d always hoped. Maybe he was going to make the world a better place, bring people a sort of faith in good things. 

It used to be that he would have added _getting married and starting a family,_ but now…

Cas’s expression flickered. It showed very little, but Sam’s stomach clenched. “Cas,” he said, “am I going to become—”

He was cut off when Cas suddenly grabbed him by the collar, pulled him close, and kissed him.

As a distraction, it was very effective. The kisses and caresses Cas had allowed before, which he always carefully curtailed before they led to anything more, were nothing like this. Cas crushed Sam desperately to him; Sam arched against him and pulled him down on the bed behind him, fingers clutched tight in Cas’s hair as Cas’s restraint finally broke and he kissed Sam as if he were air and the angel was drowning, and Sam was drowning in desire, and they rolled over and something gave way in the decrepit bed (not designed to take the weight of two six-foot-and-plus men even in its younger days) so it sagged in the middle and rolled them even harder into each other.

“What you will become,” Cas panted as Sam pushed his trench coat off his shoulders “is a hero. Braver than anyone, and… so beautiful, I…” 

He paused to moan as Sam kissed his neck hard, pushing his collar aside and pulling at the flesh with his lips. “So you _do_ like me in the future,” Sam breathed. “Even if we’re not lovers, you want me.”

Cas closed his eyes, fingers clutched in the fabric of Sam’s shirt as he shoved it up to touch the flat planes of Sam’s belly. “I want you,” Cas answered. “I want, and did want, and will always want you, Sam.”

“Then take me. If I won’t remember anyway—”

“Sam, do not tempt me. You are very young, and it isn’t right. There must be nothing to remember, nothing more for me to take out of you.”

“No, “Sam disagreed. “Take everything out of me, I don’t care. We have now. Give it to me now, and give it to me in the future, too. Cas—whatever happened. Whatever the reason you think I don’t want you then, I do. I know I always will. Come to future me and tell me how you feel. Promise me you’ll try—”

“I cannot. There can be no promises between us, Sam. I have broken too many. You don’t know—you can’t understand…”

“I don’t need to understand,” said Sam. “OK. No promises. You’ll take my memories. So give them to me now. Give me something worth taking away. Cas, I… I need you so much. I love you. You must see that.”

Cas was still in his arms. He reached up to stroke Sam’s face and turned him so he could kiss him. “I do. And I love you. I love you… very much, Sam.”

“Then show me,” Sam murmured against Cas’s lips.

So Cas did.

~ * * * ~ 

Cas was out of time, in the wrong place, doing that which was forbidden, with someone perhaps too young for it. The story he was writing on Sam’s beautiful flesh he would have to erase immediately after, like creating a vast, intricate sand painting in the path of a hurricane. Nothing about this was planned, a good idea, safe or wise. Yet as his vessel and his grace twined with Sam’s body and his soul, he could not but feel he had never done anything more right.

Coming to the year 2001 to stop Michael and damn the Winchesters, once again, to their grim future, he had not meant to fall in love. But he now realized he was already in love, and always would be. He had even known there was a time when the older Sam, in his own time, might have returned the feeling, seeds of affection sown when he was bitter soil to receive it. And he had razed and salted their mutual earth when he had almost destroyed Sam, along with the world, in his terrible hubris and folly.

Sam had, perhaps, forgiven him. But _this_ Sam, the one who arched so willingly beneath him, the one who had at first kissed with a charming awkwardness that was now swept away in a tide of passion, was innocent of all the evil. It would not stay away long, but it had not found him yet, and if Cas could lay aside years of war and apocalypse and just _be_ in this moment, Sam could love him. And never know that he shouldn’t.

He wished with a sudden, violent desperation that he could stay. Leave the future to burn itself out how it would, and perhaps leave his grace behind as well—rip it out as Anna had, and become human. He could go to Stanford with Sam, wear his socially awkward T-shirt, share Sam’s classes and his bed, and love him so well that heaven and hell no longer mattered. He could give Sam the life he had always wanted and live it with him, leaving demons, angels, and monsters behind forever. 

But as Sam clutched his hair convulsively and cried out his name, he knew he could not. For he loved the other Sam, too. He loved his unparalleled heroism, his tragic sacrifice and his loyalty and his lost ambitions and his brokenness and his _choice._ This innocent beauty would be ravaged… into even greater beauty. This hope would be crushed by unimaginable despair. And Cas was going to let it.

He wrapped Sam in his wings and his passion and his desperate love, giving him all that heart and body and grace could give. He loved him over and over, took all of Sam’s naïve tenderness and stamina for love and painted the most gloriously erotic, ecstatically sensual, furiously beautiful sand painting in the history of this magnificently flawed universe.

When dawn came, he brought the hurricane.

~ * * * ~ 

Sam woke up, feeling strangely fuzzy. His mouth was paper-dry, tongue thick like he had a hangover, but he knew it wasn’t that. The only time he could ever remember feeling like this was when he was ten, he and Dean had been holed up in a church basement while Dad was on a hunt, and he’d gotten strep throat with a high fever. He’d felt like he was looking at everything through thick, yellowish glass, and even when Dean repeatedly explained, he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. He’d finally come back to himself, and Dean had said—

“Finally awake, Sleeping Beauty?”

Sam groaned. He was eighteen, not ten, and this was a crappy hotel room, not a church basement, and Dean was—

“Dean! Are you OK?” Sam sat up abruptly, peering around. The bed he was in creaked loudly and rolled him back into it; it was broken, sagging almost to the floor in the middle. He felt a little dizzy, but it was fading. “What—where are we?”

“You don’t know either?” Dean sat in a threadbare, mud-green armchair in a completely unfamiliar motel room, looking at Sam and scratching his head. 

“No…” Sam hauled himself out of the pit of the bed; as the sheet slid off him, he found that he was naked. He flushed a little and clutched the sheet to himself as he searched for his clothes.

“You don’t remember how you got here? Here is Salix, Iowa, by the way.” Dean held up a matchbook, and frowned at the naked Sam, who finally found his underwear and pulled them on. “Hey… did you have a girl here or something?”

“I don’t remember,” Sam said honestly, “but… where would I meet a girl out here? Hey, there’s blood on you!” Sam finished pulling on his jeans and moved closer to Dean, whose shirt was torn and bloodstained. His hair was bloodied as well. “Are you hurt? Still bleeding anywhere?”

“Nope. Not a scratch. I saw it, but it must not be mine. I came to in this chair about ten minutes before you. You didn’t seem hurt, but I couldn’t wake you up. Thought it might be a spell, so I looked for hex bags, but the room is clean. And Baby’s parked out there, neat as you please, and I can’t remember anything after that salt and burn I texted you about.”

They talked, trying to piece together how they’d gotten there, but they were utterly stonewalled. Sam could remember nothing but texting Dean for some vague reason, needing to know where he was, then deciding for yet another unclear reason to leave Stanford to search for him.

“From these texts we know Dad wasn’t with you, so I must’ve thought you were in trouble,” said Sam.

“Well,” said Dean, gesturing down at his bloody shirt, “guess I was. I’ll have to look into what kind of monsters can erase memories. Witch is my best guess, but Dad might know more. But I guess I didn’t think you’d come even if I was in trouble. You know… we’re always in trouble, me and Dad, and I thought you wanted out of all that.”

“I did. I do. But I can’t just…”

“Pretend you don’t have a family?”

Sam bristled. It was a familiar fight. “Look, Dean—”

“No, you look, Sam.” Dean leaned forward. “I get it. Maybe better than you think I do. Since you left… well, it’s not the same without you. Dad is… worse. I can’t talk to him anymore.”

“Could you ever?” Sam said bitterly.

“Not a lot maybe, but more than you. Look, Sam. He misses you, a lot. And he’s worried about you. We met a friend of Bobby’s in Connecticut a month ago who said he was heading out to the west coast. Dad asked him to look in on you, make sure Stanford was safe.”

“It’s safe,” said Sam. “And… I kind of miss Dad sometimes, too. But he said—”

“I know what he said, but it was his pride talking. And _I_ didn’t say it. I want you to keep being my brother, Sam. I think… like I said, I don’t remember how I got here, but what I was thinking when I woke up and saw you here, was that. That it’s really important that we stay brothers.”

Sam swallowed, looking down. “I’ll always be your brother, Dean. And I like being at Stanford, but… I miss you.”

Dean stood up, clearing his throat gruffly. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t go all chick flick on me,” he said, but despite his words, he gave Sam a rough hug, clapping him on the back. 

“Well,” Dean continued, “I don’t think we’re ever gonna figure anything else out. Whatever stole our memories did a pretty thorough job. But I don’t know, Sam. I get the feeling that it’s… case closed. I’m re-thinking asking Dad about it. Maybe I’ll make up some case to account for the lost time. Not say anything about the missing memories—he’ll just freak out and try to hunt whatever it was that did it, and I got a feeling that’s a waste of time.”

“Me too,” Sam said. “And… could you not tell him you saw me? It kinda feels like it might be… salt in the wound, right now.”

“Sure. Your secret’s safe with me. Now, you probably have fancy classes to get back to,” Dean said, “and I think I should take advantage of the amenities of this fine establishment and grab a shower before I get back on the road.”

Sam peered doubtfully into the bathroom. “You might be a little cleaner afterward,” he said.

Sam packed up the little bit of stuff he had with him while Dean showered. His mind was reaching for something… an erotic dream, only the feeling of which remained, wisps of passion dissolving before he could touch them. His body stirred at the almost-memory, and as he tossed the covers back on the bed, he saw that something _had_ definitely happened there. He blushed and spread the bedspread carefully over the evidence, sighing as he thought of returning to his lonely dorm room.

A prickle of hope interrupted his gloom. Maybe he wouldn’t always be lonely. He’d gotten a few admiring glances from girls at Stanford, even if he’d been too shy to start a conversation yet. He could meet people. He could move on, and make something of his life. Somehow, he was sure he would. He had this strange idea that, in some way, he could even become a hero.

~ * * * ~ 

  


When Cas returned to the bunker, Sam and Dean were out on a case. There was no one to share his year 2001 triumphs with. He knew they would be relieved that Michael had been defeated and the threat to young Dean eliminated, and that their future-past would remain intact.

He also knew that Sam would remember nothing of their time together. The bunker had never felt so empty and cold.

He wandered to Sam’s bedroom and stood in the doorway, looking at Sam’s neatly made bed. Hours before in Cas’s subjective timeline, he had seen a bed in far greater disarray but with inestimably beautiful contents: young, naked, erotically tousled Sam, smiling in his peaceful sleep, memories spilling from his head as Cas gathered the reasons for that smile into the arms of his grace.

He stood by Sam’s bed now as he had then, recalling the beautiful light of all he had given and taken. Sam stirred beneath Cas’s hand as Cas drew the memory of shopping at the thrift store from him, wound the light of his laughter around his arms, bent to kiss him one last time as he took all the other kisses from his mind. Tempted to leave just one, Cas lingered as Sam’s sleeping mouth instinctively responded to his, then at last, with a tear in his own heart he feared would never heal, he sent Sam into a deeper sleep with one last touch and left the seedy motel room behind.

Banishing Michael had been relatively simple. Cas arrived just as Dean got fed up with the manipulations from the creature that looked like him and tried to attack the angel. Michael flung Dean into a pile of scrap metal in the salvage yard and was advancing on him with the usual arrogant archangel threats when Cas took him by surprise from behind, hit him with the grace-draining banishment spell, and sent him, as Dean would surely quip, back to the future. 

Cas sent the half-conscious Dean to sleep as he healed him, extracted his memories, and transported him and his car to the motel where he’d left Sam. He’d had just enough “juice” to do it before being called back to his own time.

Simple and neat for the Winchester. Not so for Cas’s heart.

“Cas?”

Cas turned. He hadn’t meant to be caught in Sam’s bedroom, like some sort of stalker. But Sam just came in and set his duffel on the floor. “Everything go OK in the past? Is Michael taken care of?”

It was a shock to see Sam—so different, yet so much the same, hardened into greater beauty by time, sacrifice, and sorrow. Cas had a flash of a younger, softer Sam in his arms, the music of his ecstatic cries in Cas’s ears…

Sam was looking at him strangely. He had gone still, almost as if he had seen, or felt, what had flashed through Cas’s mind. 

“Hey,” he said, in an odd tone. He stepped close, closer than either Winchester ever stood to Cas in these latter days, and he towered over him—fully grown now into the mature, strong, heroic man Cas realized he had always loved.

Sam looked down into his eyes, seeking something there. Then he was looking lower than that. 

Reaching tentatively to touch it, Sam said softly, “Where did you get this shirt?”

His tone was... dark? dangerous? Merely curious? Cas could not read this Sam—guarded, neutral, his face giving nothing away—like he could the open, optimistic younger one. Even that Sam had bowled Cas over utterly, wrapped him around his finger and took everything in his heart, and Cas had stolen it back like the worst sort of insidious thief…

He turned away, feeling Sam’s gentle bewilderment at the sudden flash of pain and anger, and said, “At a flea-bitten thrift store in a backwards town in Iowa.” Without knowing why, he immediately wished he hadn’t said it.

“Iowa,” Sam murmured. Cas heard a rustling of cloth, and turned around in shock to see Sam unbuttoning his plaid over shirt. But Sam merely looked at him and mildly gestured to the T-shirt underneath. 

Cas stared at it mutely. The dog design was scuffed, the purple color faded from when he had last peeled the shirt off Sam’s body.

“I put this on today,” Sam continued. “I don’t know why. I haven’t worn it in years—didn’t even know I still had it. Dean used to make fun of it and joke about where I might have gotten it, and I could never remember where that was. But you know. Don’t you? Was it middle of nowhere Iowa, in 2001?”

Cas did not answer. He was frozen in a lake of memory—of all that he had ever done to Sam, good and bad. The agony of his worst mistakes fused with the ecstasy of love and the flashfire of endless longing and the terror of Sam’s judgement, so well deserved—

“Give it back,” Sam said.

Cas stared at him. “What,” he said flatly.

“Dean and I were talking. We both remembered, when we sent you back for Michael, that time after I’d left for Stanford that we saw each other. We never figured it out, but we have now. I know you took away the memory. Can you give it back?”

"Sam... I fear you... will never forgive me if I do. Perhaps... perhaps after all you have suffered of betrayal, it was a violation too great—”

Sam’s stare stopped his words, and Cas’s heart cracked again at his inscrutable face, so opaque to him now. “The memory?” he said “Or that you took it from me?”

Something gave way in Cas then, years of pain and need breaking down a door. “Oh, Sam. I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything. I am so… so tired of divine manipulations and secrets and _destiny._ I wish just once… you could have what you want. But I do not even know what that is anymore, or if it is even possible. You once believed I could answer your prayers—”

“And did you? Back then? Because I think you did,” Sam said. He stepped closer, and the intensity of his gaze was unbearable. Cas had come to young Sam as a divine being when Sam knew nothing of the divine, and now, Cas thought Sam knew it better than he did. He had been to heaven and hell and had plumbed the depths of Cas’s grace and found there a love Cas didn’t know existed.

“Cas,” Sam said. “We don’t know what the future is. I don’t know what happened. I can’t say how I’ll feel about it, but it’s mine, Cas. My memory, my choice. Please. Give it back.”

So Cas stepped close, and put his hands once more upon Sam, and did.

The End


End file.
